‘Did he ask you for help last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you refused?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suspected that. I kept it to myself, because of Rachel. Do you realise that it is you who have killed my father, Julius, and nobody else?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Andrew. A man holds his destiny in his own hands.’
‘I don’t know anything about destiny - all I know is that father is dead because of you. I wish I could kill you - and I can’t because of Rachel.’
He began to cry, miserably, silently, the tears scalding his mouth as he stared out of the window of the cab. ‘I’ll have to tell Walter this,’ he said.
Julius shrugged his shoulders.
‘It doesn’t matter to me if you tell the whole world,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s my affair.Your father should have managed his life more wisely.’
‘You’re inhuman - God! - Rachel is his daughter, didn’t you think of her at all?’
‘One of the first things I told Rachel was this - “I’m marrying you and not your family; remember that always.” Supposing you take a cigarette, Andrew, and pull yourself in shape. This conversation won’t help you. Nothing under the sun will bring your father back now.’
The crash of the Dreyfus firm and the suicide of the founder caused a mild flutter on the Stock Exchange, and a certain amount of interest in society. The crash, of course, accounted for the suicide. Nobody suspected that it might have been avoided. The two brothers, out of a strange blind loyalty to their sister, kept silence on the subject; but inevitably with the death of Walter Dreyfus the family drifted apart. Andrew went out to South Africa ten days after the funeral. He joined a Boer regiment as a private soldier and was killed at Paardeberg in February. This second blow turned Martha Dreyfus into an old woman. The home in Portland Place had been sold, and she retired to the country where she lived in seclusion with an unmarried sister.
Young Walter Dreyfus sailed to New York, went into a large shipping firm, and eventually married and settled in America for good.
These ties gone from her Rachel Lévy clung more closely to her husband and child. Her home was the centre of her life, to act hostess, to bring up Gabriel, to serve as that serene and charming background which Julius needed for his life.
It seemed to him that she belonged more to him since her family had disbanded. She and Gabriel were more definitely and finally his than they had been before, and he was pleased with this because possession was dear to him.
He thought of Walter Dreyfus with his heart torn from him, lying still and horrible before his desk in the office, and Martha Dreyfus a sad, solitary old woman, mooning over little flowers in a wet garden; and young Andrew hacked to pieces on a plain in Africa, and young Walter among strangers in a new land; and he thought, as he drew up an agreement for a new café, how strange it was that in his life things always turned to his advantage.
Now came the close of the century and the death of the Queen, followed soon by peace in South Africa, and these things also served as a milestone in the life of Julius Lévy. They marked the end of an era showing him the path to greater prosperity than he had as yet achieved. It was the beginning of a new age - the age of progress and speed and efficiency that he had long foreseen and the dawn of mechanism in all things, electricity, motor-cars and soon flying-machines in the air. The spirit abroad was one that he understood, the demon of restlessness unsatisfied stretching hungry fingers to the skies in a superhuman effort to conquer insatiable hunger, a spirit of rapacity and greed and excitement burning like a living flame.
In this bright world that travelled too fast Julius Lévy prospered. Success lay in a touch of his hands, wheresoever he trod; whatever he seized for himself became like particles of gold to add to his splendour, and nothing escaped him and nothing was lost.
Over twenty years ago he had arrived in England, a shabby, pale-faced Jew, who had no country and no friends; who shivered in a sordid attic of a lodging-house denying himself food and clothing, and now he was forty-two, Julius Lévy risen from obscurity, admired and envied, and sought after and praised.
The sentiments he inspired by his fortune and success were the sentiments he craved, not affection, not loyalty nor trust, for these could pass him by, these were worthless anæmic qualities, but envy and angry admiration and hatred at times and fear.
It was good to be envied by men, it was good to be feared, it was good to experience deeply the sensation of power by wealth, the power of money tossed to and fro lightly in his hands like a little god obedient as a slave. The voices around him were warm and thrilling to his heart because of their envy. He knew the meaning of the whispers and the glances. ‘Julius Lévy . . . there’s Julius Lévy.’
Voices, and eyes, and fingers directed towards him; wherever he walked he would be aware of them, and it was meat and it was drink to him, it was life, and lust, and glory, and desire.
Now that he had launched his cafés upon London, there were other paths that beckoned him - the lovely hidden roads of finance. He could juggle with the markets of the world, he could buy and he could sell, and his intuition was like a streak of lightning that comes before the thunder. He was first in all things; he was ready two seconds before his opponents. It was as though he calculated upon the hesitation of his fellow men, he allowed in his mind for those two seconds of caution and reconsideration, and in that time he was away from them, he had cast his fly, he had won.
There was a fascination in this business that seized upon him with the itch of a fever in midsummer. It excited him, it tore at him, it would not leave him alone. There was adventure here and danger, and the cafés were safe, solid foundations that spread themselves and developed into mountains of success.There were Lévy cafés in all the London districts with the building in the Strand and the new building in Oxford Street rearing their white façades and their triumphant golden signs high above the traffic and the passers-by. They were the fountain heads and the mark of fame. While in the provinces rose others no less prosperous, no less carefully considered, each one planned and planted in firm ground by the mind and the hand of their creator.
Soon there would surely not be a town in England that did not boast its Lévy café. Each building especially adapted to the needs and peculiarities of its local population which must first be studied, but all of them bearing the style and fabric of the fountain heads, all with white walls, white floors, white-coated assistants, and the slick smart service of a meal despatched in half an hour at a fixed popular price, with orchestra and flowers thrown in, and no gratuities.
‘Lévy’s for Service,’ ‘Lévy’s for Speed,’ ‘Eat more and spend less,’ slogans and catchwords that caught the eye and were placarded on hoardings, in newspapers, on omnibuses, spreading even to music-hall refrains and then becoming a sure gag to a low comedian.
‘The Lévy Pies,’ ‘The Lévy Chocolates,’ ‘The Lévy Cakes,’ articles in common use in every household, because they were cheap and because the name and the brand had caught the fancy of the middle-class purchaser.
They were rich in experience these years of achievement. They brought an ever-increasing knowledge of life, and adventure and sensation, of men and of women; and these experiences came to him without expenditure, without affecting physically or mentally any particle of his health, his vigour, his personality or his fortune, so that somewhere within him was still the laughing spirit of the incorrigible boy who rubbed his hands and chuckled to himself: ‘Something for nothing - something for nothing.’
Apart from the passionate chase after money and profit and ‘nothing to pay’ that was the current and the main stream of his life, there were backwaters and branches to explore, there were hidden creeks, and undiscovered channels. There was existence in the home, there was Rachel and the child.
The house in Hans Crescent was a dwelling of the past, that had been the comfortable establishment of a rising man who had married the daughter of a small
diamond merchant, Walter Dreyfus.
Since then they had moved to Bryanston Square, with a ‘shake-down, ’ as Julius expressed it, at Maidenhead because Rachel expressed a fondness for the river; and now they had moved again, this time to the big house on the corner of Grosvenor Square, absurdly extensive for two persons and a child, but built and furnished obviously for entertaining on a lavish scale, which was what Julius intended to do. And though Rachel clung out of sentimentality to the small house at Maidenhead, there was a new house down at Hove, for the summer months - a splash of modernity on the front with gay window boxes and coloured blinds. Here part of July, August and September could be spent, and perhaps weeks now and again during the autumn and winter to escape fogs and because sea air was good for the child; but the season must never be missed in London, nor the early spring, nor the weeks before Christmas.
The Lévys went everywhere, they knew everybody, and even if he was a Jew, and a foreigner, and had made all that money out of those vulgar cafés, surely it did not matter so very much if he were willing to entertain, and to spend that money. And besides, he was so very intelligent and brilliant, and mysterious and dangerous, and his parties were marvellous affairs, and his wife was really charming - and there it was, he was powerful, he was successful, he was Julius Lévy.
Rachel was an admirable hostess, Julius had always known she would be; and her taste was good, and her clothes were good. Yes, he knew what was said of her: ‘Rachel Lévy always seems to wear the latest thing a month before anybody else,’ and ‘that house, my dear, quite overwhelming, positively magnificent, ’ and ‘their food, their servants, their wine ... O God! - to be as rich as that ...’
Why was it, people wondered, that Carlo the pianist should refuse to play at their houses and yet perform when Julius Lévy asked him? Why should Chequita, the world-famous prima donna, lift up her voice with naïve informality after supper in Julius Lévy’s drawing-room and nowhere else? Why was it that Rachel Lévy, wearing one string of pearls, should make other women look shabby and cheap in their diamonds?
Why did they have the telephone in every room when many of the guests had not yet installed one in their hall? Why did they possess two motor-cars before anyone had properly realised that cars were vehicles at all?
Why - why - why—They resented Julius Lévy and his wealth, they protested, and they disapproved, but they clamoured for invitations to his dinners, they flocked like herds of geese to his parties, they followed him to Ascot, to Goodwood, to Henley - a familiar figure everywhere with his hat a little on one side and his inevitable cigar. Women flustered, twittering, longing to catch his eye, and men eager, suffused, knowing that to be acquainted with Lévy might lead in some small measure to prosperity on their own account, with a handshake here, a nod there, and a word dropped carelessly at a City luncheon.
There were other parties too where Julius Lévy acted host, and these because they were less known were whispered over and wondered at, and nobody was sure if the reports were true or false, because the very essence of their attraction was the veil of mystery that shrouded them, dark and secret. It was said that he had a house in Chelsea somewhere, of which his wife held no knowledge, and that here he played sultan to a harem of lovely ladies whose birth and position should have taught them greater discretion. It was said that girls were decoyed here from the streets and were not permitted to depart until he had had his way with them. It was said that strangers visited the house by night and that they wore masks to conceal their identity.
Legends grew up about the habits of Julius Lévy: he was oriental, he was a sadist, he was a pervert, he kept black women, he took opium. Story after story was whispered behind hands and nobody brought certain truth of any of these things.
Julius lived as it pleased him to live, and it mattered little to him what people said or thought. He believed that hunger should never go a-begging, and because of this his fancy fell on strange faces at times and in strange places. It would seem to him that surely along this dark river there must be something rich, and something rare; new treasures to stand within his reach and dazzle his eyes - always hungry, always thirsty, always curiously jaded.
And he searched, and he stretched out his hands, and he drank deeply of what he found, but part of him was blunted, part of him was stale, and part of him was lost for ever with the fierce sharp joy of a boy who threw stones at a washer-woman’s window.
For this was worthless, and this was old, and this was like a close dank fungus smell, and there was nothing exquisite, or lingering, or dangerously sweet; and he must travel on, on, always a little further to the next river, to the sound of uncharted waters beyond the bend, to the shadow path across the hill. In spite of disillusion, and cynicism, and the dull, stale taste in the mouth, Julius Lévy never wearied of his search. He was as tireless as the child who discovers a road beyond the garden gate, every moment in his life was a living moment of adventure that counted with him and made its mark.
He was his own god, he, Julius Lévy, and the power he made for himself. He was beholden to nothing and to no one and his destiny belonged to him.
There were moments when he stood in the Oxford Street café, the largest of all his buildings, with its great white front and its dome and its golden lettering and its glass doors, and he would watch the stream of people during the lunch hour fill the deep restaurant and the floors above; black dots of men and women like swarms of flies into a spider’s web. The chatter of a thousand voices, the clatter of plates and glasses, the scraping back of chairs, the strains of the orchestra, the swift bustle of the efficient white-coated attendants, the good-food atmosphere. There was life and power and excitement in this picture before him. There was vitality and strength. It brought to him the same sensuous enjoyment that the market had done long ago in Neuilly with the bargain cries, the heaps of cauliflower, onions, fruit and cheese, the fluttering of the stalls in the breeze, the scattering litter of dust on cobbled stones.
There were moments in his offices in the Strand, leaning back in the chair before his roll-topped desk, pausing a moment for a suitable phrase in a letter, which his secretary waited for him to dictate. From his window he could hear the traffic noise in the Strand below, he could see the grey roofs of buildings stretching down to the City - a dome, a spire of a church.There was the ceaseless hum of movement that was City noise, that was working, breathing humanity. A day of ceaseless activity would spread itself before him; one glance at his calendar would insure him of this.These letters to dictate and the constant interruptions, the low b-r-r of the telephone at his elbow, switched through to him from the outer room by another secretary and therefore meaning an important call: ‘Birmingham wants you, Mr Lévy’ ...‘Hullo? Hullo’ - Standish, the Birmingham manager, with some essential matter to report - ‘All right, Standish, I understand the situation, and I’ll wire instructions.’
Going through with the letters - ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you with this, Mr Lévy, but there’s been some trouble over in Kensington ...’ ‘Well, send Kelly to me, he must go down there and take over until Johnson is fit ...’ The telephone again, the manager of the Western United Bank: ‘Yes, I tried to get you twenty minutes ago. I want twenty-five thousand from No. 5 transferred to the Liverpool branch. Can you fix that? Fellow called Wilson is my representative there . . .’ A tap at the door. ‘Mr Conrad Marx to see Mr Lévy, he has an appointment.’
‘Show him in right away.’The architect for the new building scheme in Oxford Street - a roof garden that in summer could be covered in within five minutes in case of rain. ‘Look here, Marx, you’ve got to prove to me on paper it can be done in the time, otherwise I’m not employing you.’
More letters, more telephone calls, more interviews, and somewhere about one-thirty a luncheon with Stanley Leon and Jack Cohen across the way at the Savoy.
‘I want you to see what the devil is happening at Leeds, Cohen. Complaints all the time. You can sack Frue if he’s the trouble. If he isn’t I??
?ll come up myself and raise hell,’ and to Leon: ‘I see Holborn dropped three thousand last week, how do you account for it?’ Then catching a glimpse at another table of a fellow he recognises as the director of the Bank in Hamburg, leaves his companions and crosses over to their table: ‘Hullo, how d’you do, Schwaber? Tell me the truth about the Carlheim Steel. I’ve heard the Hamburg factory’s gone up in flames.’
‘How in God’s name did you get wind of it?’
‘I had my scouts out as usual. Sold every share I possessed yesterday afternoon. So it is true? That’s all I wanted to know. Come to dinner to-morrow. Rachel’s got Vanda coming, we’ll get her to sing.’
Then wandering back to his own table, the servile waiters bowing before him, his big cigar between his teeth, and hearing somebody murmur: ‘There’s Julius Lévy.’
By three o’clock before his desk again in the Strand offices. More interviews, more telephone calls, and then at a quarter to five finding Henry waiting for him with the Rolls to take him along to the Oxford Street café, where he was kept until half-past six; but his temper was good and he was looking forward to his evening. As he leaned back in the car he remembered with satisfaction his telephone message to Isaacs in the City as soon as he left the Savoy after lunch: ‘Yes, the Carlheim factory’s burnt.There’ll be a sudden rise in Worldorf when it gets known. Start buying at once and quit when they start jumping. If they reach the old level you can sell, they won’t go beyond that.’
There were moments when work could be put aside for a little space, when he was not Julius Lévy the thinker, but Julius Lévy the host. The bright sun shining in a cloudless sky, and driving with Rachel down to Ascot, she in lavender blue with a lace hat on her pile of red-brown hair, those envied pearls about her throat.And sitting in the box above the course watching King Edward arrive in the royal carriage drawn by milk-white horses, and then luncheon served by Moon and the two footmen in the room behind the box: cold salmon, chicken, strawberries and cream, champagne, the laughter of his guests, beautiful women, the shouts of the crowd warning them that another race had started. Gaiety, excitement. ‘Julius, my dear, how like you to be the only creature to back the winner,’ Nina, Baroness Chesborough, touching him on the shoulder in pretence of mockery, handsome, intelligent, and he looked at her until her eyes fell; she wanted to be his mistress - and the light, and the colour, and the scent and movement of women, the thud of horses’ hoofs on the turf, their bodies sleek and glistening with sweat, the patch of blue hydrangea below the King’s box, a friend laughing in his ear: ‘Hullo, Lévy - you’ve got a wonderful crowd in your party.’ Another glass of champagne, another cigar, another smile at Nina Chesborough, and the whole of his pleasure concentrated in one glance on the buttons of the livery worn by Moon and the footmen, gold buttons on which the letter ‘L’ stood plain for all to see.